Facilitating socio-cognitive and socio-emotional monitoring in collaborative learning with a regulation macro script – an exploratory study

This study examines student teachers’ collaborative learning by focusing on socio-cognitive and socio-emotional monitoring processes during more and less active script discussions as well as the near transfer of monitoring activities in the subsequent task work. The participants of this study were teacher education students whose collaborative learning was supported with a designed regulation macro script during a six weeks environmental science course. The script divided the group work into three phases, namely: the orientation phase, intermediate phase, and reflection phase. The script was put in use by prompting questions that were delivered to the students on tablets. Question prompts instructed groups to plan their collaborative processes, and to stop and reflect on the efficiency of their strategies and outcomes of their learning process. The data were collected by videotaping the groups’ face-to-face work and analysed by focusing on verbalised monitoring interactions. More active and less active script discussions were differentiated in terms of the length and the quality of discussion. The results show that the macro script was used more thoroughly at the beginning of the group activities for orientation than for coordinating the progress or reflecting on the performance. Active script discussions involved more monitoring activities, especially providing socio-emotional support. Once socio-emotional support was stimulated in the more active script discussion, it tended to follow-up during the task work. It can be concluded, that the groups appropriated the script differently in different situations and with varied success. The implications of facilitating socio-cognitive and socio-emotional monitoring in collaborative learning are discussed.